


all the lonely hearts in brooklyn

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'You don’t love me,' Natasha says. 'I know you’re not pining after me. I’ve set you up with every beautiful saint in Brooklyn and they don’t do it for you. So what are you looking for, Rogers?'</p><p>'That’s a big question for after midnight,' Steve says."</p><p>Or: Steve's loved a lot of people in his life, but he's still lonely, and maybe he's still missing the best friend from high school that he lost track of long ago. Natasha says she's happy to stay friends with benefits with Steve. Sam's starting to date after the loss of his husband, Riley, four years ago, but it's hard. </p><p>And then Sam has the idea that one of the guys from a therapy group he leads needs to get out his anger, and what better way than for this guy to spar with his roommate, Steve?</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the lonely hearts in brooklyn

“Somebody as nice as you shouldn’t be so lonely,” Natasha says, stretching next to Steve.

She puts her head on Steve’s shoulder and he runs his hand through her hair: soft, nice-smelling, just the color the pre-Raphaelites loved. “I’m not that nice,” he says. “I’m not lonely either.” 

Natasha sits up then in the watery moonlight and pulls the sheet up to cover her legs. “C’mon, Rogers,” she says. “This is fun, but you’re the I-wrote-my-own-vows, roses on the anniversary type.”

“Hey, when’d this become about me?” Steve reluctantly sits up against the headboard, because it seems like they’re really having a discussion now. “We’re not even allowed to talk about you,” he points out.

“Because I’m happy doing this,” Natasha says, doing the you-and-me hand gesture. “I sleep with people I like; everyone has a good time. I’m very satisfied. You’re not.”

Steve covers his yawn with his hand. It really is late. “Aw, you like me?” he says.

Natasha tilts her head with a tiny hint of a smile. “You don’t love me,” she says. “I know you’re not pining after me. I’ve set you up with every beautiful saint in Brooklyn and they don’t do it for you. So what are you looking for, Rogers?”

“That’s a big question for after midnight,” Steve says.

Natasha says, “Gotta ask it sometime.” She’s so good at this, finding the soft moments where Steve finds himself saying things, sometimes things he didn’t even know he was thinking until he says them. If she was a spy rather than a personal trainer, she’d be the most dangerous spy in the world.

Steve really wants to go to sleep and not look at Natasha being incredibly beautiful in the moonlight, curled up like a mermaid in sea foam in the white sheets of his bed. “I don’t know,” he says.

The moment breaks, and Natasha-the-mermaid forms legs again and steps out of the bed. “I’m going to brush my teeth,” she says. “Think about it.”

Steve thinks about it.

Steve thinks about it when Natasha comes back to bed and relaxes next to him again, just close enough that he can feel what it is about her body that was driving electricity through him an hour ago. He does like her a lot, likes the push-and-pull that’s always there with her, the intellect behind the little questions she asks. He does love her, in a way, but strangely it’s not as a lover. She’s a friend. 

Steve thinks about it the next day, too, when he’s jogging with Sam. Steve seems to have lots of friends in little compartments in his life: Natasha is his gym friend, and also his sleeping-with-one-another friend. Sam is his roommate, practically family too. Maria is his high school friend. Peggy is his college friend, or at least the only one he regularly talks to after college ended and everyone he knew went home to somewhere thousands of miles away, or got married. Although Peggy also got married.

Maybe Steve just does better with one-to-one friendships. Even his very first friend, the friend who will always be in Steve’s mind when he hears the word, was _Steve’s_ friend. He had a lot of friends, but they weren’t part of a group. It was really always the two of them against the world. Steve and—

“Hey, Steve,” Sam says, as they’re walking home, cooling down from the morning’s jog. The air feels clean, and they’re walking together, and things are simple and okay. It’s almost six a.m.

Steve says, “Yeah?”

Sam sighs, and then says, “How’d you feel about sparring with someone other than Natasha at the gym?”

If Sam’s asking, it’s important. “Open to it,” Steve says. “They’d have to be experienced, of course.”

“Very,” Sam says. He looks at the sunrise. “There’s a new guy in one of my groups, a veteran, special forces. PTSD. He’s having a really hard time, and . . . I said to him, maybe you just need to fight it out. I told him, I have a friend who does mixed martial arts, boxing, all kinds of stuff. He says, what about my arm—he has a prosthetic arm, a prototype. Thing hits hard. I said, my friend’s pretty tough, why don’t you give it a try. So there it is. He said okay, I can ask you and tell you the deal, so there’s no violation of confidentiality, just so you know.”

Steve says, “Okay.” This is definitely out of normal procedure, but Sam is one of the best at what he does because he knows what people need. So this is what Sam’s client needs, which means it’s what Sam needs. So it’s okay. “You know involving me is gonna mean he knows your address. Makes it personal to you.”

“Yeah, it’s not ideal,” Sam says. He shakes his head. “This guy, James, he goes by Winter among his friends.” He rolls his eyes a little. “He’s a good guy, though.” As they go into their apartment building, Sam takes out his keys. “I’ll let him know what you said.”

Steve nods, and then, as they get into the elevator, Steve says, “So how’d it work out last night with the girl from the reception desk?” He’d been at Natasha’s, so . . .

“She’s nice,” Sam says, genuinely.

Steve makes a commiserating face. 

“Yeah, I know,” Sam says, but with no bitterness. “She’s not Riley. And that says I’m not ready. And I wish I was, but I guess . . . you can’t be ready when you’re not ready.”

Steve puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

"Thanks," Sam says. "You're getting good at this therapy stuff," he adds, with the little conspiratorial glance that means he's poking fun a bit, but in a nice way. Sam always has a warm way of being amused by other people that's both sincere and kind of flattering. He just _likes_ people, easily and without trying too hard. That's something that Steve envies, sometimes.

Steve laughs, and the elevator doors open to let them out. Sam says, “Speaking of, when am I gonna meet Natasha properly, other than seeing her for a second in a towel in the hallway at 4 a.m.?" 

“Natasha is very elusive when she wants to be,” Steve says, which is absolutely the truth. “She isn’t very good at personal, and you’re practically my family. But, I’ll try.”

"You know, it only makes me want to meet her more when you describe her like she's some kind of secret agent," Sam says, raising an eyebrow, and they go into the apartment.

Riley was Sam’s husband; he’s gone four years now, long enough that it’s okay to talk about him sometimes on an ordinary day. Steve never met Riley, but he met Sam when Sam led a grief counseling group that Steve went to. Sam was there for Riley; Steve was there for his mom, finally, even though she was gone just before he went to college.

Steve and Sam did make out, one time; maybe if their lives had fallen out differently they would have ended up together romantically, but first Sam was mourning Riley, and then Sam and Steve moved in together and became like they are now, almost family, and then after the kiss, which was nice, they decided that what they needed from one another was the friendship that they already had. But there’s no question in Steve’s mind that Sam will find someone when he’s ready; Sam is effortlessly, naturally, sweetly charismatic in a way that draws people to him like moths to a lamp, as well as being a truly, genuinely good man right down to his bones. If Natasha thinks she knows all the beautiful saints in Brooklyn, Steve thinks, well, she missed one.

But her question,  _what are you looking for_ , sticks in Steve’s mind as he showers and as he tries to get started on the day's work.

Nobody knows that Steve did pick out a ring, once, in a store, although he only had them put it aside and never ended up buying it. It was for Peggy, who he thought was his ‘right partner,’ until they both realized that loving one another and sharing the same dream still wasn’t always enough to make a partnership work. It was Steve who just couldn’t do politics, who couldn’t schmooze, who loathed every moment of listening to any kind of political speech even if he believed with all his heart in everything it said. Peggy had come home with Steve one day, in another vision of a red dress while Steve was in a suit, and she’d said, “You hate doing that, don’t you.”

But Steve was proud of her, wanted to support her, would happily have been a stay-at-home husband while Peggy became a congresswoman and then a senator or even the President, and he told her so and Peggy said, “I know, Steve. It’s that what I do is all compromises and unfairness and choices between a bad option and a worse, and you can’t walk up to Congress and tell it to shape up or you’ll kick it out of the Capitol.”

Steve still remembers the day he went to the store and said he didn’t want the ring after all.

They’re still close, and Steve still loves Peggy and follows her impressive achievements in the state legislature, and he should consider himself lucky to be cared for by so many people.

_What are you looking for?_

Steve tries to sketch out his ideas for the new comic book project he’s working on, until he realizes who he’s drawn as the protagonist. A guy who always holds his chin high, who stuffs his baseball cap into his back pocket and smiles like a cat—

Steve looks at the pages and then puts them aside.

In the evening, Steve and Sam sit like old men in deck chairs on the balcony of their apartment, drink a beer each over the course of the evening.

“You know, when I was a kid, my best friend’s name was James,” Steve says.

Sam frowns and says, “Wait, I thought it was Bucky.”

“Well, it was Bucky. Officially, it was James, but he went by Bucky.”

“Well, at least his parents didn’t inflict that name on him,” Sam says wryly. He looks at Steve carefully. “So, was he a rule-breaker, like you, or was he a stabilizing influence?" 

Steve can’t help but laugh. “I got him in a lot of trouble all the time,” he says. “No, Bucky was a good guy.

“You know I was a shrimpy kid? He was tall, lots of the girls liked him even since elementary school. Teachers liked him, everybody’s parents wanted you to be friends with Bucky. He was good at sports, good at school, good at everything, really. I used to think he had all the luck in the world. And everything was good for him, but he wasn’t selfish, not at all—he just wanted everybody to be as happy as he was. When he had a date with a girl, he was always trying to set me up on a date too so I wouldn’t be left out. He always told me he’d be a famous baseball player one day and I’d be a famous artist. I thought we’d be best friends all our lives.”

“What happened?” 

“Bucky’s parents got divorced when we were sixteen,” Steve says, looking out over the people down below. There’s not much of a view, just the street, but compared to his apartment when he was little, he lives in a palace. “It was messy. Bucky and his sisters had to go with his mom, and then they kept moving all over the country. If it was five years later we would have had Facebook, but the internet wasn’t quite that much of a thing yet. We e-mailed, and we sent letters too, but I think Bucky didn’t always have a computer, and he was looking after his sisters a lot. And then my mom got sick. And I guess, it’s not that I forgot about Bucky, but for a lot of high school all I did was go to school and then come home and take care of my mom. And when—when I went to college, after, and I tried to find Bucky, he’d moved house and . . . we’d lost touch.”

“I’m getting the impression maybe on your side you didn’t just like him as a friend,” Sam says, gently.

Steve puts his empty beer can down by his feet. “Yeah,” he says.

There’s not much else to say until Sam’s phone buzzes. He looks it and says, “Hey, my guy Winter wants to meet you for coffee before you beat each other up. What do you say?”

“Not a bad idea,” Steve says. “Can I have his number?”

“Yup, doing it,” Sam says, and he sends it to Steve.

“By the way,” Steve says, “are you still free for a dinner party tomorrow night? Natasha says she’ll come if I make my garlic chicken and devil’s food cake.”

 “Natasha strikes a hard bargain,” Sam says approvingly.

The sun sets on Brooklyn, on Steve and Sam, on the guy called Winter and all of Sam's people, on Natasha and her roommate-slash-ex Clint. In DC, on Peggy and Peggy's husband and Peggy's kids. In Arlington, on Riley, and, somewhere in the world, on Bucky Barnes.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment and let me know what you think!
> 
> I know this fic is very talky. I guess I was going for a sense of atmosphere? 
> 
> Stay tuned for happiness and fluff in the next chapter.


End file.
